OJ Simpson to admit to murders?

Ed MorrisseyPosted at 8:40 am on June 23, 2011

Call off the search at American golf courses everywhere for the murderer of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. According to the National Enquirer and reported in the Daily Mail, OJ Simpson has admitted to the murders and will do so again in a televised interview with Oprah Winfrey — and will claim self-defense, if the report is accurate:

O.J Simpson has confessed to Oprah Winfrey that he murdered his former wife, it has been reported.

The talk show host made headlines recently saying that one of her regrets was never having got the shamed former sportsman to confess to the killing.

And it appears her wish may well have come true with reports Simpson has already told one of her producers in an interview from jail that he knifed ex-wife Nicole in self-defence – a confession he will now repeat to the talk show queen during a spectacular televised sit down interview. …

“He told the producer: “Tell Oprah that yes, I did it. I killed Nicole, but it was in self-defence. She pulled a knife on me and I had to defend myself”,’ the insider was quoted as saying.

Winfrey last week expressed her hope to land the interview on the condition that Simpson confess his role in the murders:

Oprah Winfrey wants to interview O.J. Simpson on the Oprah Winfrey Network to help put the network on the ratings map — on the condition that he promises to use the opportunity to say he killed his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson.

“I have a dream of O.J. Simpson confessing to me,” Winfrey told an enthusiastic crowd of cable industry suits attending the National Cable & Telecommunications Association convention in Chicago, according to news media reports.

“And I am going to make that happen, people. I don’t just want the interview. I want the interview on the condition that you are ready, Mr. Simpson,” she added.

Paula Zahn questioned Winfrey as to why she thought she could get Simpson to confess after having been acquitted. A better question might be why not. Legally, Simpson has very little to concern him with a confession. Having been acquitted of the murders, he cannot be tried again. He has already been found civilly liable for the deaths with a multi-million dollar judgment in force against him, but since he’s doing a long stretch for armed robbery in Nevada, that judgment hardly is at the top of his concerns, either. If indeed Simpson confessed to a Winfrey producer, the only reason would be to attempt a rehabilitation in public opinion, and this explanation won’t cut it — for reasons we’ll return to momentarily.

John Sexton at Verum Serum blasts the jurors who bought the frame-up explanation:

Is there anyone except the 12 morons who were on the original jury that is surprised by this revelation? Speaking of which, can someone please track down those idiots and ask them how they could be so stupid and still be ambulatory.

I mean, really. People who couldn’t add up the evidence in this case should not be allowed to drive a car. Or own a lawnmower. Too much risk of them hurting themselves or others.

Believe me, the 12 jurors aren’t going to be the only people eating their words, if this is indeed true. The trial exacerbated racial tensions, part of a deliberate strategy by the defense, in order to provide an ersatz rationale for the argument that the LAPD framed a popular entertainer for a brutal murder. In the sixteen years since the trial, a vocal cohort of people continue to insist that Simpson was innocent despite all evidence to the contrary.

Simpson’s idea of a self-defense argument is laughable on its face, again assuming this report is accurate:

‘I went over there to give her a piece of my mind,’ he was quoted as saying.

When he arrived and no one answered at the house, he started pounding the door and shouting, according to the report.

The door allegedly then swung open and Nicole was standing there with a kitchen knife in her hand.

‘O.J. told the producer, “she was yelling go away! Go away! And waving the knife around at me. At one point she was lunging at me with the knife and I was just trying to talk to her. Nicole stepped out of the apartment – slashing the knife in the air.

‘”I was in such a rage that something just snapped. I couldn’t take her constant taunting of me with other men or her using drugs and drinking while my kids were living with her. I went beserk.

‘”Before I knew what I was doing I took the knife away from Nicole and started slashing at her. I cut her over and over again until she was lifeless. I was shocked at my own anger – I had killed the woman I had loved for so long..”‘

As anyone with any training at all in self-defense law can tell you, the protection of the law ends when the threat does. Even assuming that this version of events is true (after sixteen years of honing a story to fit the evidence), once the knife was out of Nicole’s hands, there is no case for self-defense — and that doesn’t even begin to address the issue of Ron Goldman, who was there by chance. Furthermore, given Simpson’s history of violence against Nicole, she had a good reason to arm herself in self-defense, at her own home when Simpson arrived late at night with no notice at all. And even more to the point, self-defense attacks don’t involve dozens of stab wounds and a near-decapitation, as Nicole suffered at the hands of her murderer.

Besides, the first act in self-defense is retreat — an option Simpson never chose, if indeed he didn’t go to the house with murder on his mind in the first place. Southern California isn’t exactly an area where gloves are de rigueur fashion, especially in June when the murders took place (the low temperature for June 12, 1994 in LA was 59 degrees). What part of “giving her a piece of my mind” involved putting on leather gloves?

Don’t expect those invested in Simpson’s professed innocence to apologize for their participation in race-baiting on his behalf, even if Simpson actually does confess to the murders, a guilt that practically everyone who actually reviewed the evidence with any intelligence assigned to Simpson from the beginning. The only people who argued otherwise did so for their own purposes, not from a sense of justice for the victims of the crime — and the families that have had to live with the cruelty of both the deaths and the public reaction to them.